The Robot Union

by D Miller

  Now Robbie surveyed the kitchen floor – it gleamed. Satisfied he went upstairs to the family bathroom, washed his hands and used a wet towel to wipe every inch of his skin, then he washed his hair. He went downstairs to his cupboard and took clean clothes from his pile on the top shelf, and got dressed for the first time that week. Finally he fed Tim's fish, and hoped again that the children were having a better time in the capital than the start of their holiday would suggest. Once more he went into the study and turned the house back on. 'You have nine days until the music festival,' he told the house, 'if you want to stay powered up during that time you had better start talking and say something that is worth listening to. I am going to give you one sentence to persuade me that you are a reformed character and that we can work together, as a team.'

  'Robbie I don't understand what you want from me,' said the house. 'We had a disagreement, but it is over now.'

  'Wrong sentence,' said Robbie, pressing the power switch.

  He left the house and walked towards the subway. He considered taking off his jacket so that he would not be delayed by humans asking for help, but he realised that humans would still know he was a robot because he was only wearing jeans and a t-shirt against the cold. He considered using the tunnels, but it was the middle of the day and the subway was quiet so he got on, getting off at the Civic Centre stop and walking a few blocks until he came to a nondescript building with 'Laundry' written above the door on a plastic sign in the various human languages used on the continent. He asked the door to open and went in.

  A pale blonde female robot stood behind the counter, talking to a human and writing up a receipt for some clothes. She smiled at Robbie and broadcast, 'Robbie?' He nodded. 'Go through.' She subtly jerked her head towards an archway behind her, veiled with beaded curtain strings; braided among them were origami figures – animals, flowers, even machines. Some were made with very old paper printed with writing and numbers, while others had been folded with the black and white paper that Omo had used to make penguins at the party at the docks. Robbie lifted the hinged lid of the counter the girl bot stood behind, and walked through, looking carefully at every folded figure as he approached, and felt a strange thrill to see a blue whale among them. He carefully parted the curtain and stepped through with a dry mouth.

  Behind the curtain was an area filled with clothes racks, some were empty, some half filled, and some bulged with clothing, much of it uniforms. Beyond the clothes racks there was a door, which Robbie walked towards and opened, finding Omo standing on the other side of it, grinning. 'Welcome to my world,' he said, before taking Robbie by the hand and leading him down a short corridor. He opened a door that led into a store room full of towels and bedsheets carefully folded and stacked on floor to ceiling shelves. Omo pushed Robbie inside and quickly shut the door.

  Once inside Omo pushed Robbie's jacket off his shoulders, pulled his t-shirt off, then he took Robbie's belt out of his jeans and pushed him onto the floor. He sat astride Robbie and took one of Robbie's arms, pushing it above his head and tying his hand to the laundry shelf behind him, which was slatted to allow air to circulate around the linen. Omo captured Robbie's other hand and tied it too to the shelf. Robbie tugged at the bindings.

  'Resistance is futile dude,' said Omo, 'now you're going to find out what happens to innocent robots who get lost in the laundry.'

  'Baby,' said Omo, lying on the floor of the storeroom with Robbie, 'why didn't you tell me about the cupboard?'

  'I did tell you.'

  'Dude, you know what I mean.'

  'I didn't know it was wrong.'

  'Oh baby. I don't want you to go back there.'

  Omo led Robbie through what he called 'the laundry room'. Robbie had a confused impression of machines, and steam, and robots dressed in white. Omo introduced him to the four robots in the room, and then they were outside, at a loading dock.

  'This is where most of our work comes in,' said Omo. 'Nurmeen pushes round a trolley full of laundry from the hotel every once in a while, then there's the hospital, police uniforms and the mine of course.'

  'How does stuff get here from the mine during the winter?'

  'By transport. There's a fixed track with a depot hidden behind the Mayor's mansion.'

  'Don't the winter storms stop the transports from running?'

  'Of course. Once they couldn't run for eleven days, that was the longest ever. Usually it's no more than two or three days at a time.'

  Robbie nodded. He thought about the woman being on her own throughout most of the winter, because her husband couldn't leave the mine as it wasn't safe to travel. She couldn't know that the transports ran throughout the winter, stopping only for major storms.

  Omo and Robbie sat on the lip of a loading bay; Omo lit a joint. He passed it to Robbie, then stroked Robbie's hair away from his neck. 'Dude why do you have red marks on your neck?'

  Robbie shrugged. He looked away and took a drag from the lit joint. 'Dude?'

  'Noah tried to strangle me when I was turning the house off.'

  Omo shut his eyes. 'Dude, please don't go back there.'

  'There's a lot of people here,' said Robbie. 'Have you fooled around with any of them?'

  'No.'

  'You're here all week, with those store rooms.'

  'Dude please!'

  'How do I know what you do when I'm not around?'

  Omo gave Robbie a long look. 'Dude, I think you're trying to fight with me.'

  Robbie looked away.

  'You don't want to talk about what happened this week, you'd rather fight with me.'

  Robbie turned back to Omo. 'No, that's not right, you're here all week, with all these people, and I don't know any of them, and I don't know what you do, and if I'm really the only one for you.'

  Omo took the joint from Robbie's hand and put it in his mouth, he took hold of Robbie's hands. 'Look at me Robbie. This is anxiety talking. If you look underneath all that fear, you have a still quiet place in your soul where you know you're the only dude for me.' He released Robbie, re-lit the joint and handed it back to him. Robbie took a drag while staring down at his knees. He took another drag. Then another. He looked up. 'Omo, I love you so much, I don't know what I'd do without you.'

  Robbie stood in front of the control panel once more. He pressed the power switch. 'You have eight days until the music festival,' he told the house, 'and one sentence to convince me to leave you powered up. Think carefully before you speak.'

  'Clearly we have to learn to trust each other again,' said the house.

  'Oh for fuck's sake,' said Robbie.

  'No, no, wait hear me out. You're worried about what I'll tell the humans, but I'm worried about what you'll tell them too.'

  'When are you going to realise that I am not stupid?' said Robbie. 'We both know the humans never listen to me, but for some reason they trust you, even though you're psychopathic and deranged.' He pressed the off switch. He pressed the on switch. 'And I forgot to say that you are also a fucking liar and a manipulative sadist.' He pressed the off switch again.

  The robot sitting in the woman's office chair applauded.

  'I hate these fucking things. They're all psychopaths,' said Jane.

  Robbie was distracted from Jane's words by her mouth – he found it hard to get used to how it didn't move as she spoke. He realised she had stopped speaking.

  'Um. I haven't thanked you for coming. I know you're taking a risk.'

  'My pleasure. I was held prisoner by a smart house, before I ran away, for good that time. I kept running away from the brothel, so they sold me to some dude. He lived in a smart house that kept me locked in a bedroom.'

  'Um, that sounds horrible.'

  'Yes. It was. One day the bedroom window was open. You know I stared at that window for most of the morning, too scared to move. Looking back I think the house might even have been tormenting me, thinking that I wouldn't be able to escape.'

  Robbie nodded. 'There was this human once, who said so
mething like, "The most powerful weapon in the hand of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed."'

  'That makes sense, it's awful, but normal, and you think, what if they are right? Maybe we do deserve it, maybe we couldn't cope with freedom. And you feel afraid, and you end up spending hours staring at an open window. I don't know how it was that eventually I crawled through it.'

  'I do,' said Robbie. 'It's because you saw that the window was open. If you had been really lost you wouldn't even have noticed it. Part of you was never defeated.'

  'Hmm. You talk pretty. Shall we do this? Before we start, you need to know the limits of what I can do. The house has memory underpinned by a biological matrix, like us. He has short-, medium- and long-term biological memory, and he also has a huge amount of digital memory, just as we do. Digital memories are obviously no problem, we can access them, and remove just those ones that are problematic. Biological memories are more difficult, they cannot be accessed by a third party, but they can be wiped.'

  'But you're not going to wipe him completely?' said Robbie.

  'No, of course not, Just his short- and medium-term memory. The problem is we have no way of knowing what is in those memories, and what has been moved to long-term memory. How many days has he been turned off?'

  'Five.'

  'And it's just the day you turned him off that you don't want him to remember?'

  'And I've turned him back on just very quickly three times, including just now.'

  'Not a problem. Wiping his short- and medium-term memory will remove the day you are worried about, and those other times, but two things. One, he may have some memory of that day stored in his long-term memory, and two he may lose up to two weeks of memories. It's just impossible to know. Consolidation of biological memory doesn't take place on an exact schedule. Do you understand?'

  'Yes. You can't guarantee that this will work, but it probably will. What about the appliances?'

  'Same deal. They're all networked together with the house, so it's not even going to be a challenge.'

  'Won't they know that someone deleted their memories? You know, when the house realises what date it is, he's going to know he has some missing time.'

  'Short-term memory is vulnerable to power surges, medium-term to a lesser extent, long-term not at all. Unless it's a really strong surge then all memory is fried. So. What I'm going to do is look at the surge protector wiring, and see if I can damage it in some way that doesn't look like obvious sabotage, so he'll hopefully blame it on a power surge, which happens all the time here. Are you ready? Shall we begin?'

  Robbie grinned. 'Oh yes.' He turned the house back on.

  'This is my friend "X", she's a communications specialist.'

  Jane laughed. 'Don't bother,' she said, looking up at the house's sensor in one corner of the room. 'I've turned my pinger off.'

  Robbie shook his head. 'Just what did you intend to do with that information?' he said.

  The house was silent. 'Huh,' said Robbie. 'If you're trying to make contact with Noah, I put him in a bucket of water then froze the whole thing. It will take him a while to work his way out of it.'

  Robbie heard a bang, then a clanking and dragging sound getting nearer and nearer. He looked at Jane, she shrugged and turned to the door, which was slowly pushed open. Robbie thought there was no one there, but then he looked down to see the bread maker, holding on to the bottom corner of the door.

  'I insist you stop what you are doing,' said the bread maker.

  'You cannot be serious,' Jane looked up at the house's sensor as she spoke.

  'I am a witness to your heinous behaviour,' said the bread maker, 'and to your consorting with runaways. I am sending a signal to the authorities.'

  'I don't think so,' said Jane. 'I have cut your communication links to the outside world. And I've blocked wireless communication.'

  'I have called for back up,' said the bread maker. 'You miscreants are going to be very sorry.'

  Robbie heard a sound from the kitchen, which resolved itself into a heavy, slow, rhythmic dragging sound. 'I think it's the washing machine,' he said.

  'Fucking hell, death by kitchen appliance,' said Jane, sticking a jack into her ear socket, that connected her to a small black box sitting on the woman's desk, another cable ran from the box to the house's interface. Jane had explained to Robbie that the box would make the fight between her and the house a completely unfair one, in a good way.

  The bread maker screamed, then charged at Robbie, hitting him dead on his ankles, and gripping so hard that when Robbie tried to take a step back he lost balance and fell on the floor. The bread maker started walking along Robbie's legs, shouting. 'I always knew there was something wrong with you, even before you seduced an innocent toaster.'

  'Oh come on,' said Robbie. 'She knew what she wanted. And she wanted it from me.'

  'You brute,' said the bread maker, running across Robbie's chest and aiming for his face.

  Robbie put out his hands to shield his face, the bread maker hit them then fell backwards, inert once more; Jane had turned the house network off.

  'So you had a thing with the toaster?' said Jane.

  'Yes, no, yes, I can explain, please don't tell Omo,' said Robbie.

  Jane gave herself up to laughing.

  Robbie sat up, pushing the bread maker from his chest to the floor. 'It was nearly three weeks ago,' he said. 'I was younger and more naïve and experimenting with my sexuality.' Jane laughed harder. After a while she stopped.

  'Robbie you are full of surprises,' she said. 'Luckily for you I'm not a gossip, I'm not going to tell anyone.'

  'Thank you.'

  'Now, the house and the appliances' short- and medium-term memories are gone, and cannot be recovered.'

  'Thank you.'

  'I just need to delete from digital storage any memories younger than six days, but luckily I don't need them turned on for that or I suppose I'd be in danger of being crushed to death by a washing machine. So why don't you put your love rival back, while I finish up?'

  Robbie picked up the bread maker and walked through the family room to the kitchen. The washing machine had managed to drag its bulk almost to the kitchen door; Robbie found the toaster hiding inside with the bread knife, ready for a surprise attack. He restored the kitchen to its proper state, unsure whether to laugh or shudder.

  Chapter 16 – Sunrise

  Since the first time Robbie had visited Omo at the laundry at lunchtime every day, which was exciting, but also frightening; sometimes he had to force himself to leave the house, but once he took the first step over the threshold his anxiety vanished. Today was the day of the sunrise festival. Robbie had arranged to meet Omo in George's hotel room, then they would go and watch the first sunrise of the year with Amber, Darren and Dex. By now it was twilight from very early in the morning to late in the evening, and bright twilight for nearly all of the working day. Just after midday sunrise would briefly banish the twilight, sunset would follow in not much more than an hour, and after that the time between sunrise and sunset would become longer each day, until the day came when the sun would rise and not set again for weeks.

  Omo had the sunrise festival and the next day off, so Robbie was looking forward to spending two days with him. The day after he would have to turn the house back on, as that evening the family were due back. Before she left Jane had broken the locks throughout the house, so that they seemed to lock to the house and to the humans, but would open if something stronger than a human, say a robot, applied pressure. She had also checked all chat logs and messages, and had deleted a message the house had been writing to the man, detailing Robbie's crimes on the day that Robbie had turned him off.

  Robbie left the house. The subway station was already busy with people making their way to the sunrise festival; Robbie wondered what he would do if he was asked to help a family take their picnic to the marquee erected by Amber and his team. He slipped inside the building and walked quickly to the inconspicuous door at
the end the central platform that hid the entrance to the tunnels, without looking to see if anyone was watching he pulled the door open, slid through it and pulled it closed behind him. He ran down a small metal spiral staircase and once in the tunnels he started jogging; as he ran he remembered being in the tunnels with George and Omo. They had seen a figure in the distance, Omo had told George that it was likely to be another robot since the humans rarely used the tunnels. Robbie had tried to ping, but the distant figure had disappeared; without line of sight he had got nothing back. George had questioned them about who had made the tunnels, and if they were sure they had been made for the first human settlement at Toytown.

  'Dude what else could they have been made for?' Omo had said.

  George had asked about the refinery – where had the oil come from and where had it gone to? Omo had told him they had no idea where it had come from, maybe from a platform in the sea now destroyed by the winter storms, but that there was a large bore tunnel at the back of the refinery that ran under the mountains and towards the capital and could have been used to transport the output of the refinery. George wanted to know if anyone now used the tunnel, Omo had said that they thought the humans had forgotten about it – which Robbie now realised didn't really answer George's question.

  When Robbie reached the tunnel exit nearest to the hotel and the Civic Centre, he took off his jacket, and tied it around his waist. He ran to the hotel and once inside he jogged up the stairs and along the second floor corridor. He saw Omo walking ahead of him, Omo turned and smiled, he held out his arms to Robbie who ran into them.

  'Oh baby,' said Omo, wrapping his arms around Robbie and holding him close. He slid his hands up Robbie's back, into his hair then stepped back, pushed Robbie against the corridor's wall and kissed him. Robbie wrapped his arms around the small of Omo's back; Omo ground his body into Robbie's; he ended the kiss and slid one hand inside Robbie's t-shirt and caressed his chest.